My thoughts on Panther

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Hello everyone.



I have a longtime friend who programs for the OS X Finder Team at Apple and he gave me a copy of Panther this past weekend.



I don't have any performance numbers or benchmarks but let me just say that I am impressed with the "zippy" feel of the new OS. Everything responds faster and feels faster. This is a subjective statement but I can definitely tell the difference.



I am pretty difficult to please when it comes to the response time on OS X upgrades but Panther has done it. I think all of you will be impressed....I still think that it can be sped up more but what is impressive is that we see speed improvements with each update. I think that is pretty unique and is promising for the future....



I installed it on my G4 400 MHz AGP tower and on my 667 TiBook and I can feel a difference on both computers.....



-Dr. Bimane



P.S. Expose' kicks ass.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 30
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Dr.Bimane

    I don't have any performance numbers or benchmarks but let me just say that I am impressed with the "zippy" feel of the new OS. Everything responds faster and feels faster. This is a subjective statement but I can definitely tell the difference.



    Like OS 9 speed?



    Quote:

    Originally posted by Dr.Bimane

    I am pretty difficult to please when it comes to the response time on OS X upgrades but Panther has done it. I think all of you will be impressed....I still think that it can be sped up more but what is impressive is that we see speed improvements with each update. I think that is pretty unique and is promising for the future....



    Good to know. I've heard that sheets drop down faster and are dismissed faster, etc. What about minimising windows in the Dock ? is that much better? Can you minimise other windows while another one is minimising? (This is where the OS feels slow - during animations).



    What about window resizing? Moving the mouse left and right in the menubar with menus changing? And lastly what about scrolling ? and what exactly does smooth scrolling do?



    What about application startup times? I've heard these are greatly improved, but do most applications launch before the end of the first bounce in the Dock?



    Quote:

    Originally posted by Dr.Bimane

    I installed it on my G4 400 MHz AGP tower and on my 667 TiBook and I can feel a difference on both computers.....



    I wanna see it on a 350 MHz G3 iMac... m.
  • Reply 2 of 30
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    I think OS 9 speed is highly subjective because it's a totally different kind of speed than OS X speed. OS 9 is fast when nothing is going on. Windows open, close, resize, and move instantly on any G3 and most 604es as well. But as soon as you open an application, any application, things slow down. You have to wait until everything is done loading and THEN you can continue. In my opinion, OS 9 may look fast, but it generally is slower than OS X. Besides, who's going to have good enough reflexes to take advantage of OS 9's near-instantaneous window management? There's a limit to how fast you can click close boxes or hit command-W. OS X's speed is more useful than OS 9's speed.



    One major problem with OS X was that animations were slow. It takes a noticeable amount of time for some to get done, and you can't really do anything until an animation finishes. Sheets are much faster than before because the animation has simply been sped up, so even a computer with no bottleneck when running OS X's animations (say, a dual G5 with lots of RAM) will see a speed benefit.



    Smooth scrolling is kind of good and kind of bad. It provides a nice effect of showing intermediate steps when scrolling, especially when using page down or page up. That's nice. The bad part is when you use the arrow keys to scroll up or down. If you hold down on an arrow key, the scrolling will go slowly and "fall behind" how far the computer thinks you've been scrolling for. It's hard to explain... basically, it goes slowly at first but if you hold down for a while it will go extremely fast and jump ahead a lot. Generally, the jump occurs after you stop holding down the arrow keys. If you hold the down arrow key while scrolling down a long thread here at AI, and you let go when the scrollbar indicates you're halfway through, it'll jump a long way, sometimes all the way to the bottom as soon as you let go of the key. I don't like that.



    I'm not sure on application startup times. I never paid much attention to them because most of my applications launched in one bounce in Jaguar as well.



    I bet it would significantly improve the speed on a 350 MHz G3. It may not make it super fast and responsive but it'll certainly help a lot.
  • Reply 3 of 30
    ipeonipeon Posts: 1,122member
    I'm dizzy from reading your post Luca Rescigno, what did you say?
  • Reply 4 of 30
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    It was late and I was tired



    In summary:



    OS X is faster than OS 9 because it doesn't screech to a halt when you launch a program, burn a CD, or hold down the mouse button.



    Panther is faster than Jaguar.



    Smooth scrolling is strange and it lags. Regular scrolling isn't as pretty but it works much better.
  • Reply 5 of 30
    Panther is obviously faster than OS9 when you are multi-tasking.....



    But even when not, I would say that Panther is approaching the speed of OS9 for responsiveness....maybe not quite as fast but damn close.



    Menus drop instantly.....windows pop open.....minimizing to the dock is fast....I can scroll through .pdf files much, much more quickly....safari opens sometimes in one bounce....iTunes in 1 bounce. It is GREAT.



    I love it. It has me wondering whether or not I should purchase that upgrade card I wanted.....because it has resurrected the speed of my little 400 Mhz G4......honestly.



    I did an erase and install on my G4 tower but only an upgrade on my 667 TiBook. It is fast on my powerbook but I am most impressed with what it did to my tower. I don't know if that is because I did the clean install or because my tower used to be so SLOW compared to my TiBook that it is just a larger relative speed jump?



    I think I will get the card...but damn, Panther is really good.



    -Dr.Bimane
  • Reply 6 of 30
    ipeonipeon Posts: 1,122member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Luca Rescigno

    It was late and I was tired



    In summary:



    OS X is faster than OS 9 because it doesn't screech to a halt when you launch a program, burn a CD, or hold down the mouse button.



    Panther is faster than Jaguar.



    Smooth scrolling is strange and it lags. Regular scrolling isn't as pretty but it works much better.








    Well, that all depends on how fast your Mac is. At 500 MHz OS 9 runs circles around OS X speed wise. Simple mathematics, OS X has a lot more bells and whistles to deal with.



    It's all relative. I'm sure the higher you go in MHz the less you will be able to notice the speed difference.



    Is OS X's finder as fast with today's Macs as OS 9 was? In other words, is our finder just as fast now as it was with OS 9? Last time I was at the Apple store, OS X's finder still felt a bit laggy. Does Panther finally bring us back to the responsiveness we had with OS 9? That's the question.
  • Reply 7 of 30
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Luca Rescigno

    Smooth scrolling is strange and it lags. Regular scrolling isn't as pretty but it works much better.



    smooth scrolling seems to work just fine with a scrollwheel-mouse. it gets kinda jerky when using the keyboard for scrolling.
  • Reply 8 of 30
    pesipesi Posts: 424member
    minimizing windows seems much faster now, even using the genie effect. much smoother too. not that i ever minimize any more with expose...
  • Reply 9 of 30
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by dr. zoidberg

    smooth scrolling seems to work just fine with a scrollwheel-mouse. it gets kinda jerky when using the keyboard for scrolling.



    Yes, it's fine when using a scroll wheel or the page up/page down keys. The main problem is when you use the arrow keys, it lags horribly.
  • Reply 10 of 30
    anandanand Posts: 285member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Dr.Bimane

    Panther is obviously faster than OS9 when you are multi-tasking.....



    But even when not, I would say that Panther is approaching the speed of OS9 for responsiveness....maybe not quite as fast but damn close.



    Menus drop instantly.....windows pop open.....minimizing to the dock is fast....I can scroll through .pdf files much, much more quickly....safari opens sometimes in one bounce....iTunes in 1 bounce. It is GREAT.



    I love it. It has me wondering whether or not I should purchase that upgrade card I wanted.....because it has resurrected the speed of my little 400 Mhz G4......honestly.



    -Dr.Bimane




    Get the upgrade! I just installed a GigaDesigns 1.25 Ghz G4 card into a friends G4 400 and the speed is incredibel. The card came set at 1.4 and ran for 1 week without any problems (I said I need the time to make sure everything was OK )WIth Jaguar the machine was nice but with panther - oh boy! This machine screemed. It is as fast as OS 9 when doing 1 simple thing and blazing when doing multiple things. Panther and GigaDesigns - a great combination for all 3 year old G4 machines!
  • Reply 11 of 30
    dfilerdfiler Posts: 3,420member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Luca Rescigno

    Yes, it's fine when using a scroll wheel or the page up/page down keys. The main problem is when you use the arrow keys, it lags horribly.



    Agreed. Apple should disabled arrow-key smooth-scrolling until it actually works. Scrolling accelerates after the arrow key is released. Page-up and page-down as well as the scroll wheel all currently work well with smooth scrolling though. This seems like something destine for a 10.3.x update.
  • Reply 12 of 30
    algolalgol Posts: 833member
    I have a question about Panther. In Jaguar Application window resizing is very slow and choppy. I have a 1Ghz TiBook and when checking CPU usage it only uses around 50% while resizing so it seems to me that they could drastically speed this up. So have they?
  • Reply 13 of 30
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    About window resizing in OS 9:



    You can't compare it with OS X, because in X, the contents of the window scale with the resizing. In OS 9, you only see a very basic outline.
  • Reply 14 of 30
    The minimize to Dock animation is no faster, but the Windows do respond to a click on the minimize button immediately now, instead of the 1 second delay I had before.
  • Reply 15 of 30
    tidristidris Posts: 214member
    In Panter the GUI is faster than in Jaguar, and that gives the impression that everything is faster. However the number crunching behind the GUI should run at the same speed as in Jaguar. So for example, iMovie will feel more responsive in Panther, but exporting a movie to disk should take the same time as in Jaguar. SETI should take the same amount of time to process a data unit as in Jaguar. And so on.
  • Reply 16 of 30
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Algol

    I have a question about Panther. In Jaguar Application window resizing is very slow and choppy...



    I do not recognize window resizing to be any more responsive in Panther.
  • Reply 17 of 30
    GODDAMN IT!!! ENOUGH WITH THE WINDOW RESIZING NONSENSE!!



    phew. I feel better now.
  • Reply 18 of 30
    nebagakidnebagakid Posts: 2,692member
    please, use your online voice.



    well, finally Mac OS X in Jaguar felt like my OS to me, not a new thing that I was using to try out, like OS 9 was my real OS...you know what I am saying?



    It feels different to use Mac OS X rather than 0S 9. in 9, everything is rigid, and easy to fix, no XML files at all. X is different, feels different, slower with the GUI resizing. But it is all worth it the way it automatically connects my DSL for me is worth it..oh yeah
  • Reply 19 of 30
    screedscreed Posts: 1,077member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by penseive

    GODDAMN IT!!! ENOUGH WITH THE WINDOW RESIZING NONSENSE!!



    phew. I feel better now.




    Gold star to penseive. I picture hundreds of Mac OS X users resizing the windows back and forth like a adjustable hospital bed, Homer J. Simpson-style.



    Bed goes up, bed goes down.

    Bed goes up, bed goes down.

    Bed goes up, bed goes down.

    Bed goes up, bed goes down.

    Bed goes up, bed goes down.



    Screed
  • Reply 20 of 30
    Quote:

    Originally posted by sCreeD

    Gold star to penseive. I picture hundreds of Mac OS X users resizing the windows back and forth like a adjustable hospital bed, Homer J. Simpson-style.



    Bed goes up, bed goes down.

    Bed goes up, bed goes down.

    Bed goes up, bed goes down.

    Bed goes up, bed goes down.

    Bed goes up, bed goes down.



    Screed




    that's an apt metaphor. Some of us have better things to do than resize windows all day. Panther is GRRRRREEEAT!
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